media · Picked by us

A concert grand that answers: Jordan Rudess jams with a live model

jam_bot

MIT Media Lab’s real-time instrument listens to Jordan Rudess and answers in chords, bass lines and call-and-response — with a kill switch, visible musical futures and concerts on 3 October 2026.

By Jordan Rudess @Jcrudess · Lancelot Blanchard

Watch the MIT concert

Read the MIT feature

How the instrument listens and how Rudess steers it

Official recording and project record; new concerts 3 October 2026

Made With Models illustration of a grand piano on stage beside a kinetic light sculpture weaving glowing chords toward it; this is not a photo from the performance. — Made With Models illustration. Watch the original video below.

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What it is

Watch a virtuoso treat a generative model as an ensemble partner — leading it, interrupting it, and letting it play alone.

Who it is for

Musicians and AI-curious listeners who want to see real-time co-performance, not prompt-to-song.

How it was made

Models: Custom real-time generative models · research — fine-tuned on Rudess’s performances
Tools: Custom generative system · Real-time listening and response
Kinetic light sculpture · Making the model’s contribution legible on stage

The MIT team built a real-time instrument that listens, proposes chords and phrases, and can be interrupted or restarted by the performer.
The models are fine-tuned on performances Rudess recorded for the project, on top of an academic transcription dataset.
Live concerts in 2024 proved the system — Bach-like turn-taking, free improvisation, violin and voice — and it won a 2025 MIDI Innovation Award.

What the person did

Rudess supplied the performances, testing and artistic direction; Blanchard, Naseck and Paradiso built the system at MIT Media Lab.

What we know

Creator-reported: MIT project page with the concert recording, two papers and the 2025 MIDI Innovation Award; MIT News feature; the performer’s profile resolves.

Access checked — 2026-09-27 · Opened the MIT project page, the MIT News feature and the award reference on 2026-09-27.

Can you use it?

MIT’s video and images are copyrighted. The performance video plays here through Vimeo’s official player — MIT’s own unlisted embed, hash included — when a visitor loads it; we host no copy, audio or stills. The cover is an original Made With Models illustration, not a photo from the performance.

About this project

Picked by Made With Models. Added 2026-09-27. Updated 2026-09-27.

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